“President Xi was willing to do the railroad things—that’s magnets,” he said. “Now, nobody knows what a magnet is. If you don’t have a magnet, you don’t have a car. You don’t make a computer, you don’t make, er, televisions and radios and all the other things—you don’t make anything."

That's exactly what it is. Could've been stated a little more clearly but this is a completely coherent statement. The man does a dozen deplorable things a day, are we really that starved for headlines that this is what we're reporting on?

Almost convinced that his administration is paying for these articles so people will look at them and complaints about the Epstein files as equally valid.

Just commented, China's curtailing or completely blocking rare earth exports. Somebody told Trump how vital those minerals are to industry. Trump thinks American can spin our own rare earth mining (?) in 2-years, but acknowledges Xi is holding the cards so he's begging and threatening him over exports.

All Trump can really parse is, "Magnets vital, China screwing us." He's trying to spit out his understanding of the importance of magnets. Of course he's the smartest guy in the room, "Nobody knows what magnets are (how vital they are across industries)."

It's a dementia addled clusterfuck, but at least this time I can see where he's going and why. Also explains his otherwise nonsensical rant to the Navy on replacing aircraft and ordnance lifters with steam power. I was wrong on his reasoning, now I see it. But fuck me, no one should have to take weeks to decode his dementia.

The water and magnets comment was about electromagnets, too. He was completely wrong about the reliability of elevators on aircraft carriers, but he wasn't saying permanent magnets can't get wet.